"Andy Levy" <andy.levy@gmail.com> wrote:
[...]
> If he could hop on a train, it'd be better all around. But even for
> those shorter trips, we need faster trains to make them viable in most
> peoples' eyes, because the average speed is still much lower than the
> interstate.
Its too bad, really. Trains have a rather intangible romantic
quality about them. I'm a big fan of the various travel series done
by Michael Palin with the BBC. (Around the World in 80 Days, Sahara,
etc. - there are quite a few of them.) Anyway, he is something of a
trainspotter, and in those series he does a lot of travelling on
trains. (Mostly because that is the best way to get around in many
countries.)
I definitely don't think that they should be artificially propped
up ala Amtrak, but I would bet the private sector could make them work
again in at least some respects. (IIRC, it was the government's
involvement which hastened rail's demise in the first place. I know
I'm sounding like a broken record on that theme, but I'm positive I
read that somewhere.)
I haven't studied this topic at all, but it is my impression that
trains are pretty great as far as freight goes. In fact, I heard a
commercial the other day which I guess was intended to attract
customers to trains, I don't recall the exact details since I was only
paying half attention, but I *think* they said that they could move a
ton of cargo 1,000 miles on one gallon of fuel. (The basic jist of
the commercial was to compare the economy of fright trains to
automobiles and trucking.) Anyway, I don't know if those figures I
gave are the correct ones, but whatever they were it was pretty
impressive. I've been doing some work in a house near a set of tracks
that run through WNY between Cleveland and Buffalo, and have been
surprised at their frequency. There are a LOT of trains going through
that corridor.
In one of the Michael Palin travelogues I mentioned above, he takes
a bullet train in Japan, which was quite impressive. 150mph, I
believe, though it seemed more like an airline experience than an old
fashioned train journey. :-) It would no doubt take a considerable
infrastructure investment (privately funded, please!) :-) to be able
to handle those kinds of trains here, but its interesting to think
about.
--
-Jon-
.- Jon Steiger -- jon@dakota-truck.net or jon@jonsteiger.com -.
| '96 Kolb Firefly, '96 Suzuki Intruder, Miscellaneous Mopars |
`-------------------------------- http://www.jonsteiger.com --'
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Mar 02 2008 - 02:10:10 EST